Phelps Dodge

For the first twenty years of its existence Phelps Dodge Corp. sold cotton and tin. When in 1833 a brand new warehouse collapsed on the heads of his fusty clerks, pious old Anson G. Phelps reorganized the business, began selling lumber, iron, steel, insurance. Next Phelps Dodge acquired a patch of ground in Bisbee, Ariz, and began to dig. In 1906 it announced in all New York newspapers: "Owing to the great increase of our Copper and Railroad business in the West, we have been obliged to give up the selling of all metals except Copper."

The year copper prices began sliding downhill (1930), Phelps Dodge began moving up the ranks of the industry. It acquired a new president, hard-driving Louis Shattuck Gates, who saw that what Phelps Dodge needed was low-cost mines and proceeded to buy some. Soon Phelps Dodge ranked third in the business. Though domestic copper stocks went to 747,000 tons and the price to less than 5-c-, President Gates was still on the lookout for new cheap holes to dig in.

Last week, apparently, he found one. Phelps Dodge announced that it had acquired a block of stock in United Verde Copper Co. of Jerome, Ariz. from the heirs of Montana's late copper-mining Senator William A. Clark who owned control of the company. United Verde's sales-quota under the copper code is based on an annual capacity of 68,000 tons against Phelps Dodge's 168,000 tons.

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